I said in Chapter Thirteen: Trinitarians are obsessed with ontology, and the Bible is obsessed with relationship. Perhaps nowhere in the Bible is that contrast more obvious than in the way Trinitarians treat the words el, elohim, and theos—Hebrew and Greek respectively for our English word “god.”

What is rarely acknowledged openly is that these words have a range of meaning and legitimate usage in both original languages that is not present in our typical everyday English use of the word “god.” That is not an opinion—the Bible establishes it directly, from Jesus and from Paul.

“The Jews answered him, ‘We don’t stone you for a good work, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.’ Jesus answered them, ‘Isn’t it written in your law, “I said, you are gods?” If He called them gods, to whom the word of God came—and the Scripture can’t be broken—do you say of him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, “You blaspheme,” because I said, “I am the Son of God?”’” (John 10:33–36)

As I began to address in the last chapter, this exchange is telling. Jesus himself explained that God calls men “gods.” That is not an insignificant observation and deserves our utmost attention. The question is: why does God call men ‘gods’? The criterion given by Jesus is, “to whom the word of God came.” Does that mean that God Himself was saying these men are ontologically the same substance of “god” in the Trinitarian sense? Of course not. God was proclaiming those to whom the word of God came as His authorized representatives, His agents.

Just as significantly, the Bible doesn’t tell us, “God was being facetious,” or “God was mocking them,” or “this only meant allegorically or symbolically.” No, we hear none of that. What we have is Jesus making it as authoritative as anything else in the Bible: “and the Scripture can’t be broken.”

This means Jesus has already refuted any starting point that claims, if Jesus is called ‘God,’ it can only mean ‘true God’.

Paul makes the same point explicitly:

“We know that no idol is anything in the world, and that there is no other God but one. For though there are things that are called ‘gods,’ whether in the heavens or on earth—as there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’—yet to us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things.” (1 Corinthians 8:4–6)

Elohim Is a Category Word, Not an Exclusive Title

The foundational insight here is that elohim—the Hebrew behind the LXX’s theos—functions as a category designation, not a name. The biblical worldview presents elohim as a word identifying any being who occupies a position of divine or divinely-delegated authority (even if that authority is assumed or yielded, as in, “whose god is their belly”). The word itself does not settle the degree or source of that authority—whether inherent or derived, supreme or delegated. Context and commission determine that. Yahweh is elohim by self-existing nature—the source and standard of all authority, utterly unique among the elohim. Every other elohim in Scripture holds that designation by appointment: commissioned, sent, and authorized by the one who is elohim by nature.

That distinction is the one the Bible consistently maintains—and the one Trinitarian proof-texting consistently ignores. The assumption built into their proof-texting is never stated out loud: that el, elohim, and theos function as exclusive titles for the one true God, so that whenever Scripture applies them to Jesus, the case is closed. But Scripture itself refuses that assumption. These words are applied across a range of beings and authorities so wide that the assumption collapses under its own weight.

Scripture does not leave us to speculate about who falls within the elohim/theos category. It shows us directly.

The Range Scripture Itself Documents

Angels / Heavenly Beings

• “You have made him a little lower than elohim…” (Psalm 8:5)—translated “angels” in the LXX and quoted that way in Hebrews 2:7
• “God stands in the assembly of el; among the elohim he judges.” (Psalm 82:1)

Judges / Human Authorities

• “You shall not revile elohim, nor curse a ruler of your people.” (Exodus 22:28)—the parallelism equates elohim with a human ruler
• “Then his master shall bring him to elohim…” (Exodus 21:6)
• “Both parties shall come before elohim…” (Exodus 22:8–9)
• “I said, ‘You are elohim, sons of the Most High.’“ (Psalm 82:6)
• “If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came…” (John 10:34–35)

Moses

• “See, I have made you like God (elohim) to Pharaoh.” (Exodus 7:1)

Pagan Deities / False Gods

• “They sacrificed to demons, to gods (elohim) they had not known.” (Deuteronomy 32:17)
• “The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons.” (1 Corinthians 10:20)

Some of these “gods” are real spiritual beings—but not the true God.

Satan

• “The god (theos) of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelieving.” (2 Corinthians 4:4)

Satan holds authority by a different mechanism entirely—the submission of those who obey him: “Don’t you know that when you present yourselves as servants and obey someone, you are the servants of whomever you obey?” (Romans 6:16). His authority is derivative, conditional, and borrowed, and yet the Bible calls him “the god of this age.” Clearly not the true God—yet explicitly called theos. This single verse destroys the claim that theos always means the one true God.

The Belly

• “Whose god is their belly.” (Philippians 3:19)

Here theos is applied on the basis of function alone—not nature.

The list is not a curiosity. It is a verdict. Scripture applies god-language across many categories determined by the context of the text. The word itself establishes none of them as the one true God. Context does that—and Scripture has already supplied the context that matters.

Jesus himself provided the premier example: “the only true God” (John 17:3). Paul confirmed it: “one God, the Father” (1 Corinthians 8:6). The fact that both Jesus and Paul felt the need to define the Father as the only one true God is evidence that the word standing alone did not make it clear as Trinitarians seem to insist.

Any argument of the form “Jesus is called God, therefore he is the one true God” must do more than cite a verse where theos is applied to Jesus. It must demonstrate that the usage belongs to the exclusive category Scripture itself defines—the category occupied by the Father alone. That demonstration has never been made. Not once in the proof texts Trinitarians rely on is Jesus placed alongside the phrase “only true God” and identified as such. The category is assumed. It is never established.

That is where we turn next.

Context Always Contra-Indicates “True God”

The texts most commonly cited as explicit “theos applied to Jesus” passages are John 1:1, John 1:18, John 20:28, Romans 9:5, Titus 2:13, Hebrews 1:8, and 2 Peter 1:1. In every case—whether these or any other, without exception—the immediate context steers the reader away from the conclusion that Jesus occupies the exclusive category Scripture reserves for the Father, and toward the category Jesus himself claimed: one sent and endorsed by God, to whom the word of God came. Even if that context is nothing more than the title “Christ” (see below under 2 Peter 1:1).

John 1:1—“the Word was God”

Claim: Since the Word is called God, Jesus must be the one true God.

Context: We covered this fully in Chapter Fourteen. Jesus consistently refuted the Trinitarian interpretation of the prologue. John’s own definitions govern the reading—and the Greek of the prologue itself contains a contradiction of that conclusion the English translation does not show.

The third clause—kai theos ēn ho logos—is the one Trinitarians depend on. But in the second clause, where the Word is said to be “with” God, the Greek reads ho theos—“the God,” with the definite article, identifying a specific person: the Father, the one true God. The third clause drops the article: theos ēn ho logos, literally “divine/god was the Word.” In Greek, a predicate noun without the article denotes character and quality, not personal identity or shared substance. This is not a minor grammatical footnote—it is the difference between saying the Word is the one true God and saying the Word bears divine character as the Father’s supreme agent and self-expression. The Trinitarian reading requires the article to be present. It is not there. What John is actually showing us is the Word in the same category Scripture uses throughout—one who carries divine authority by commission, not by coequal nature. The Word is theos the way a delegated authority is theos: because the one who sent him is fully expressed through him.

One further grammatical point seals this. John does not say the Word was with the Father—he says the Word was with the God (pros ton theon), the definite article present and pointing to the same specific person identified throughout: the Father, the one true God. That means the very apparatus Trinitarians use to distinguish the Word from the Father actually distinguishes the Word from “the God.” Far from folding the Word into that category, John’s prologue recognizes the second category in its very first verse. Ho theos establishes the Father as the one true God. Theos without the article purposely places the Word in the divine-but-derivative category. John is not blurring that distinction. He is acknowledging and using it—and the rest of Scripture handles it the same way.

There is a further point the Trinitarian reading requires us to overlook. The prologue does not identify the logos with Jesus personally until verse 14: “the Word became flesh.” Everything prior describes the logos as the Father’s self-expressive agency and purpose—what it is, not who Jesus is. Reading Jesus’ personal divine identity back into verse 1 imports the conclusion into the premise.

More decisively, Jesus himself refutes that reading. In John 14:24 he says, “The word (logos) which you hear isn’t mine, but the Father’s who sent me.” If Jesus were the logos by personal identity, that statement would be incoherent—you cannot say “this word is not mine” about something you essentially are. Jesus is the bearer and deliverer of the Father’s logos, the one in whom it became flesh. He is not its personal source. The prologue and Jesus’ own testimony say the same thing.

Contra-indication: Jesus’ own words close the door on the ontological reading:

• “I can of myself do nothing.” (John 5:30)
• “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.” (John 7:16)
• “The words that I tell you, I speak not from myself; but the Father who lives in me does his works.” (John 14:10)
• “The word (logos) which you hear isn’t mine, but the Father’s who sent me.” (John 14:24)

John 1:1 cannot be used to erase Jesus’ own consistently derivative self-description.

John 1:18—“only begotten God” / “only begotten Son”

Claim: Some manuscripts read “only begotten God,” so Jesus must be true God.

Context: The claim collapses under its own language. Whatever else “only begotten God” means, “begotten” is a word that requires a source. What is begotten derives its existence from another. What is self-existent cannot be begotten—the two are mutually exclusive. John places “begotten” in the same phrase as “God”—which means John himself is not using “God” there in the “true God” sense. The word “begotten” is the contra-indicator. It points directly to the derivative nature that characterizes every other non-ultimate use of god-language in Scripture. Even if the manuscript reading is granted, the Trinitarian conclusion is ruled out by the very word they are reading past.

Furthermore, John immediately frames Jesus as the one who reveals the unseen God—not as the same one he reveals. “No one has seen God at any time” remains the controlling contrast.

Contra-indication: Jesus is the revealer sent from God, not the God whom no man has seen. John 17:3 still distinguishes “you, the only true God” from “Jesus Christ whom you sent.” Jesus’ own standard applies here directly: God calls those gods to whom the word of God came. That is the category the text points to—not the pagan idea of an incarnated deity.

John 20:28—“My Lord and my God”

Claim: Thomas directly calls Jesus “my God,” therefore Jesus is the one true God.

Context: John has already supplied the interpretive framework: Jesus is the one sent by the Father, the Son of God, and the one who says, “I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:17). Thomas’s confession must be read in alignment with John’s stated purpose just three verses later: “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (John 20:31). John does not say he wrote his gospel so that we might believe Jesus is the one true God. He says he wrote it so that we might believe Jesus is the Christ—the Son of God. That is the category Thomas’s confession belongs to.

Furthermore, Jesus had already provided the answer himself. In John 2:19–21 he identified his own body as the temple: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up…he spoke of the temple of his body.” The temple is where God dwells—not where God is personally identical with the structure. No one standing before Solomon’s temple said “this building is YHWH.” They said “YHWH dwells here.” The temple and the indwelling presence are two distinct realities in one location. When Thomas stands before the risen Jesus, he is standing before the living temple of God—the one in whom the Father dwelt, the one who said, “the Father who lives in me does his works” (John 14:10). Thomas is not making a metaphysical statement about Jesus’ ontological nature. He is responding to what he sees: the fullness of God present and active in the person standing before him.

Trinitarians and Onenessians both argue that grammatically Thomas addressed one person—and that is correct. But it proves nothing beyond what the temple framework already explains. The temple is one building. That does not make the building identical to the one who dwells in it. The grammatical oneness of Thomas’s address reflects the unity of the temple and the indwelling presence—exactly what Jesus said: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), neuter hen, unity not identity. Thomas sees that unity embodied before him and responds to it with the full weight of what it represents.

What Thomas is responding to is precisely what Jesus said qualified someone for god-language (John 10:34–36): one to whom the word of God came—one whom the Father sanctified and sent, whose works demonstrate the Father’s presence in him. Standing before the risen, vindicated, exalted temple of the living God, Thomas responds with the full weight of that category. He is not making a Nicene confession—that’s a job for future philosophers being read artificially back into Thomas’s worldview. He is making the confession the whole gospel was written to produce: Jesus is the epitome of someone to whom the word of God came.

Furthermore, the temple framework extends to believers. Paul writes: “Don’t you know that you are a temple of God, and that God’s Spirit lives in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16). And: “that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19). If the temple framework made Jesus the one true God, it makes every believer the one true God—which is absurd. The framework does not establish identity. It establishes indwelling. Christ is the supreme temple, filled with all the fullness. Believers are derivative temples, being filled with the same fullness derivatively. The difference is degree and commission—not ontological category.

Contra-indication: Three verses before Thomas’s statement, Jesus calls the Father “my God.” The text cannot be used to make Jesus the same God he himself has just identified as his God.

Romans 9:5—“Christ… who is over all, God blessed forever”

Claim: Paul calls Christ “God over all,” therefore Jesus is the one true God.

Context: This verse is punctuation-sensitive and disputed. The Greek has no punctuation—editors must decide whether “God blessed forever” applies to Christ or stands as a separate doxology to the Father. That dispute alone disqualifies it as a proof text. But even setting the punctuation question aside, Paul’s controlling confession within the same letter governs the reading. In his opening, Paul distinguishes “God our Father” from “the Lord Jesus Christ” in the same sentence: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 1:7). A man who opens his letter that way is not calling Jesus the one true God nine chapters later.

Contra-indication: Romans itself supplies the category Jesus belongs to. Paul says God sent his own Son (Romans 8:3), that the Father raised Jesus from the dead (Romans 8:11, 10:9), and that the risen Christ is now at the right hand of God (Romans 8:34). Sent by God. Raised by God. Seated at the right hand of God. That is derived and exaltational authority from first to last—not self-originating deity. The same letter that supposedly calls Jesus “God over all” also says God raised him, God seated him, and confessing Jesus as Lord means believing God raised him. Paul’s own framework within Romans contra-indicates the Trinitarian reading of 9:5 before the punctuation debate even begins. It is not out of line to wonder why Trinitarians dismiss so much context to read into a verse a doctrine it does not say.

Titus 2:13—“our great God and Savior Jesus Christ”

Claim: Jesus Christ is called “our great God and Savior,” therefore he is the one true God.

Context: The claim depends entirely on a minority translation. The majority of English translations—including the WEB, RSV, ASV, NASB, NRSV, ESV, and others—render Titus 2:13 as “the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.” A minority—including the NIV, KJV, and NKJV—render it as “the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.” These are not minor differences in wording. The former describes an event: the appearing of the glory of God, manifested through Jesus Christ. The latter collapses two persons into one and makes the passage about their identity rather than the event. The difference in the Greek is that the minority translations convert the noun doxees—glory—into the adjective “glorious.” That is not a translation. Translators don’t have the authority to change an original noun into an adjective to suit their theological preferences. It is an interpretation imposed on the text.

Furthermore, Paul was not making a statement about Christ’s nature here. His stated purpose in the passage was ethical: instructing believers to deny ungodliness and live soberly in the present world (Titus 2:12). To claim the intent was to teach that Christ was an incarnation of God is to take the passage wildly out of context.

The “appearing of the glory” reading is also consistent with what Jesus himself taught. He said the Son of Man will come “in the glory of his Father” (Matthew 16:27)—the Father’s glory, not his own inherent glory. And in John 17:21 he says, “The glory which you have given me, I have given to them.” Glory derived from the Father, and transferable to the saints. That is not the glory of self-originating deity.

Contra-indication: Six verses earlier in the same letter Paul writes: “Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior” (Titus 1:4)—distinguishing God the Father from the Lord Jesus Christ in the same breath. And in the same letter cluster: “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). One God. One mediator. The mediator is explicitly called a man, distinguished from the one God. Paul’s own letter cluster contra-indicates the Trinitarian reading of Titus 2:13 before the translation debate begins. Again we have Trinitarians dismissing all of the explanatory context to read into a verse a doctrine it does not teach.

Hebrews 1:8—“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever”

Claim: The Father calls the Son “God,” therefore Jesus is the one true God.

Context: This quotes Psalm 45, originally written about David. No legitimate Jew ever read Psalm 45 as making David YHWH himself—David certainly did not take it that way. The internal witness of the psalm itself prevents that reading: “Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows” (Psalm 45:7). The one being addressed has a God above him and is anointed above his peers. Those peers are his fellow human beings. The author of Hebrews applies the same psalm to Jesus as its ultimate Messianic fulfillment—not as a new ontological claim.

The OT itself supplies the interpretive key. “Then Solomon sat on the throne of Yahweh as king instead of David his father” (1 Chronicles 29:23). Divine-throne language in the OT means a human son of David occupying God’s throne by appointment and commission—not by shared divine nature.

Two chapters later in the same letter the author writes of Jesus: “who was faithful to him who appointed him” (Hebrews 3:2). Appointed. In the same letter that Trinitarians cite for Jesus being called “God,” the author says Jesus was appointed by someone above him and had to prove himself faithful.

Contra-indication: Hebrews 1:9 answers Hebrews 1:8 in the very next verse: “Therefore God, your God, has anointed you.” Nothing in the context assigns Jesus to the category of “true God”—context keeps him in a subordinate agency position throughout. Again we have Trinitarians dismissing all of the explanatory context to read into a verse a doctrine it does not teach.

2 Peter 1:1—“our God and Savior Jesus Christ”

Claim: Jesus Christ is called God and Savior, therefore he is the one true God.

Context: Like Titus 2:13, this depends on Greek construction and is grammatically debated. But before the grammar debate even begins, the title in the verse itself contra-indicates the Trinitarian conclusion. Peter calls him “Jesus Christ”—the Anointed One. Anointing requires an Anointer. The title “Christ” is a commissioning term, not a divine identity claim.

This cannot be overstated: the ubiquitous title “Christ,” all by itself, and everywhere it is repeated, places Jesus squarely in the category Jesus himself defined: one whom the Father sanctified and sent, to whom the word of God came. Hebrews 5:5 makes the point explicitly: “Christ didn’t glorify himself to be made a high priest, but it was he who said to him, ‘You are my Son.’” God doesn’t anoint himself. True God doesn’t need to be anointed with any authority or commissioning He doesn’t already have inherently. Thus the Trinitarian reading makes the verse into a literal oxymoron: “the God who needs to be given authority to be God by another God in higher authority.” The very title Peter uses in the same breath as “God and Savior” defines the category—and it is not the “true God” category.

Furthermore, what Peter himself says about Jesus everywhere else he speaks and writes governs the reading. In his own letter he opens with: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:3). Peter calls the Father “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ”—meaning Jesus has a God above him, in Peter’s own words, in the same letter cluster. That is the interpretive framework Peter himself supplies.

His preaching in Acts is equally consistent. Peter says God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power (Acts 10:38), that the God of the fathers glorified his servant Jesus (Acts 3:13), and that God made him both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36). Anointed by God. Glorified by God. Made Lord by God. That is the Peter who writes 2 Peter 1:1—and that Peter is not calling Jesus the one true God.

Contra-indication: The same controlling framework governs here as throughout: Jesus himself calls the Father “the only true God” (John 17:3) and “my God” (John 20:17). Paul confirms it: “one God, the Father” (1 Corinthians 8:6). Even if every disputed “God” text about Jesus were granted, the word “God” still cannot automatically mean “the only true God” unless the context proves that meaning—and in every case in the Bible, whether we examined it here or not, the context always proves the opposite. The category is always assumed by Trinitarians. It is never established by the text.

The Standard Determines the Outcome

When the biblical context is the standard, the same interpretational standard fits all the occurrences of the words for “god,” all the categories become clear and evident, our understanding sharpens, and any mystery dissolves. On the other hand, when artificial standards are imposed—whether the Trinitarian substance view or the modalist identity collapse—the biblical categories are first blurred, then distorted, then replaced with an extra-biblical category:

Modalism: Father is Jesus’s “God-nature,” the Son is Jesus’s humanity or human nature, but together they represent one personal identity.

Trinitarianism: God is one substance in three persons.

Neither view is supported by the context when it is allowed to speak.

It is not coincidental that both distortions promote the serpent’s original lie: man becoming like God (Genesis 3:5). That is the serpent’s fingerprint on both the standard and the process.

The biblical vision is something far more relational and covenantal: man becoming God’s agent. This is what Scripture intends in passages such as:

• “God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28)
• “Partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4)
• “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26)
• “Have this in your mind, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5)

The goal is not ontological merger with God—it is conformity to His character and faithful execution of His commission, exactly as modeled by the Son. Jesus, being the firstborn among many brethren, is the example of what it means to have God fully present and active within a human life. That is the end goal for His people:

“That they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us.” (John 17:21)

“That God may be all in all.” (1 Corinthians 15:28)

“That you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:19)

This is indwelling, not identity. It is unity of mind and purpose, not identity of person. And it is for us, not just for Jesus Christ. In context, he is no more God Himself because all fullness dwells in him than we are God because we dwell in him and God dwells in us—which is precisely the end God is moving toward: that we would be filled with all the fullness of God, and one with the Father even as the Father and Son are already one.

So when they ask us if we believe Jesus is “God,” we can answer biblically: Yes—but within the category the Bible defines for him, including by his own testimony, rather than the pagan or modalistic category of gods come to earth in the form of men.

In the final analysis, Jesus already explicitly explained for us what category his authority fell under: one to whom the word of God came. And he explained that, as we saw in the last chapter, both consistently and frequently. All that is really left to us is, as the Father commanded, to “hear him.”

Print This Post